Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? ~1 Corinthians 10:16

What are you thankful for?

How has God blessed you?

Typical answers to these questions seem to be:

I’m thankful that God woke me up today and that I can live another day.

Know that the Lord is God. It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. ~ Psalm 100:3

I’m thankful for my family and friends.

And I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty. ~ 2 Corinthians 6:18

I’m thankful for my health.

Nevertheless, I will bring health and healing to it; I will heal my people and let them enjoy abundant peace and security. ~ Jeremiah 33: 6

I’m thankful to know God and his great love for us.

The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. ~ Psalm 103:8

I’m thankful God has fulfilled my needs and more.

Praise the Lord. I will extol the Lord with all my heart in the council of the upright and in the assembly. Great are the works of the Lord; they are pondered by all who delight in them. Glorious and majestic are his deeds, and his righteousness endures forever. He has caused his wonders to be remembered; the Lord is gracious and compassionate. He provides food for those who fear him; he remembers his covenant forever. He has shown his people the power of his works, giving them the lands of other nations. The works of his hands are faithful and just; all his precepts are trustworthy. They are established for ever and ever, enacted in faithfulness and uprightness. He provided redemption for his people; he ordained his covenant forever—holy and awesome is his name.The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom; all who follow his precepts have good understanding.To him belongs eternal praise. ~ Psalm 111

This might be the typical list but this list isn’t exhaustive. Our list could go on forever for all the things that we could be thankful for. We should be thankful for those beautiful starry nights. The innocent laugh of a child. The way the wind blows through our hair and gently touches our skin. Every simple thing counts!

God made it. He made it ALL!

We need to thank God every day for every wonder He put into our lives. Not only do we need to be aware of what we are thankful for but we need to live out our thankfulness.

The biggest thing we should be thankful for is our salvation; for Jesus as He died for our sins. We need to remember what God did for us and drink the cup of thanksgiving, the blood of Christ, the cup of remembrance.

Participate in communion and remember all this. Drink from the cup of thanksgiving!

And like I said we need to show our thankfulness. Our love for God needs to show in our lives. We need to show our thankfulness by going where God wants us to go, by following him without asking any questions. We need to let Jesus’ love shine through us for all the world to see!

So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. ~ 1 Corinthians 10:31

As God would have it, I went throughout my whole school career having a pervasive development disorder known as “Aspergers Syndrome”. It’s a high functioning form of autism and has gained much attention over the past several years. Personally, I have a hyper active mind and that causes me to think about possibly anything except the task at hand. I experience below average or zero short term memory. Yet, I can remember an entire day from 1996 down to my outfit. And I still fight social anxiety because social settings are stressful and more difficult than for “neuro-typicals”, people without autism. I overcame the disorder, alongside self-diagnosis of an eating disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, social phobia and anxiety, from sexual abuse (rape) at the age of ten or eleven, plus, being raised by my wonderful single mother.

As a Christian, I walk close with God, my Father, and redicated my life to Him in 2008. At 19 years old, this was a decade after being raped and me tearfully and painfully confessing the event to my mother, I was liberated. After bouts with severe mental depression, sexual confusion, pornography addiction, masturbation, a life of loneliness and no girlfriends, drugs, alcohol, wild, life threatening parties, domestic abuse, faced with homelessness, air mattress nights and a dim, misunderstood, flawed life outlook (denying autisms place in my life to the core), I stand a young/old 24 years of age. God has kept me and will continue to do so.

I was searching for God, love, purpose. No dad around. I made TV, celebrities, hedonism and self pleasure my gods, idols. I tried it. Began reading my Bible at 19 years old, my party stage. God was speaking to me. I was raped and thought I had a deadly std. A false complex. Anyway, I had panic attacks, fighting God’s will. I quit. I confessed to my mom that I was raped and I was liberated. Set free.

I was a babe but wanted to be a pastor. Preaching, judging anyone next to me. Through trial and error in my walk, and struggling to this day to kill sin, I have a pretty good head on my shoulders now. I was a super pharissee from 19 years of age to very recent times. Scaring people away from God. I still love God, and I want to bring Him glory. Giving up more of my life each moment, trying with all that is in me, at least. Learning biblical manhood and I don’t really belong to a church. I was at a church which felt good at first. But after three long, servant oriented years, I learned of false teaching, and the prosperity gospel. Praying about that situation. Sometimes I attend a particular Presbyterian church I totally enjoy worshipping together there. Christ centered grounds. I just need to go consistently, prayerfully. Pastor John Piper and desiringGod ministries really encourage and challenge me to grow in Christ. They have plenty of free resources and I thank God for my adopted family there.

To His praise and celebration, I live life with purpose, encouraging whoever may be next to me at any given moment, in different methods. I am passionate, compassionate, motivated, humbled, perfectly lead, intimately family oriented loving and also any bad thing you could think of.

The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? ~ Jeremiah 17:9 (New Living Translation edition Bible)

God’s indescribably perfect love, grace, mercy and forgiveness is my everything. And I pray, through my God’s honest testimony of providence and His awesome character, my life story will stir your heart to come back to Jesus, God’s Son, the Risen Saviour of the world.

For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him. ~ John 3:16, 17 (New Living Translation edition Bible).

That’s all…for today! Haha. God bless us all. Life is meant to be lived.

Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me. ~ John 14:6 (New Living Translation edition).

Amen. My family is the best. I love you! God is Love. Grace and peace to all who read my growing story.

To say, “God is enough” is to give an absolute and incontrovertible answer to every doubt and every question that has arisen or can arise. It may not seem to our consciousness that any prayers are answered, or any promises fulfilled, but what of that? Behind every prayer and behind every promise, there is God … and if he exists at all, we know he must be enough.

“Life is not a straight line leading from one blessing to the next and then finally to heaven. Life is a winding and troubled road. Switchback after switchback. And the point of biblical stories like Joseph and Job and Esther and Ruth is to help us feel in our bones (not just know in our heads) that God is for us in all these strange turns. God is not just showing up after the trouble and cleaning it up. He is plotting the course and managing the troubles with far-reaching purposes for our good and for the glory of Jesus Christ.”

Ever miss that person who at one point was so special in your life? A friend, relative, spouse…. Time has gone by but you are still missing them. From all you can tell, they have moved on with their life. They have no intention of trying to contact you or make amends. You, yourself, have gotten to the point where you have given up trying. Despite everything that has passed between you two, you still miss that person. It doesn’t seem like that feeling will ever go away. Something small will remind you of that person. This reminder turns into a rather long daydream of thoughts that you would rather put behind you. Yet, there you are, thinking about everything – the memories, how much you really did care for that person.

At this point, maybe God has healed our hearts. Or maybe we haven’t asked him to yet. For the most part, it may seem that our heart is healed, that it is whole again. But each memory causes a fracture in our hearts. We might not see it or notice it but it is there. Every time we refuse to let go another crack forms in our hearts. We are resisting the healing that God wants for us.

He heals the broken-hearted and bandages their wounds. ~ Psalm 147:3

We are haunted by the ghosts of our pasts because we let it haunt us. Maybe we are afraid to admit we made a mistake and so we feel the need to reconcile the past or the person we thought they were. Nevertheless, memories don’t fade as fast as we would like sometimes. They can be what keeps the cracks in our heart from being sealed, keeping us from being whole.

We need to turn wholeheartedly to God. We need to learn to let go of the things we cannot change and look to the future. We need to look forward to the new and better things that God has in store for us.

Jesus said to her, “My daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be healed of your trouble. ~ Matthew 5:34

We might never see that person again but if we can honestly say that we tried to put the relationship back together, then that is all we can really do is try. We can’t force a relationship to work.

Our ghosts don’t have to consist of past relationships. They can surface in the form of regrets, missed opportunities, embarrassments, mistakes….

What are you holding on to that God wants you to let go of?

Whatever it is, nail it to the cross. Lay it down at the feet of Jesus. He wants to lift the burden from you. He wants you to have a whole heart. God doesn’t want us to be consumed with the ghosts of our past.